Dwarf Fortress, Which Has Been In Development For 20 Years, Finally Hits Steam Next Month

If you’ve never played the game, here’s a summary of what it’s all about from our review:

Most people play Dwarf Fortress in Fortress Mode, which tasks you with building and defending a fortress for a small group of dwarves. You start out with a few dwarves, though migrants usually show up once a year. You have to build up an economy to make money through trade, and then make your fortress into somewhere beautiful for your dwarves to live and deadly for enemies to get inside. You make it nice by building nice furniture and engraving the walls and floors. The engravings, which appear to the player as text descriptions, are created by the dwarves from the history of the fortress and the wider world. You defend the fortress by building traps, increasing your military, or finding creative uses for magma if you mine into it. It is much, much harder than it looks, and if you’re lucky, it’ll all go entertainingly up in flames.

Dwarf Fortress will be out on Steam on December 6, and while the existing game has always been free, this updated edition will cost $20. And while I know I’ve said the word “Steam” a lot—that trailer is even for the “Steam Edition”—note that it’s also going to be released on itch.io for the same price (and games sold there will get the developers a bigger cut).